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Phrase   /freɪz/   Listen
Phrase

noun
1.
An expression consisting of one or more words forming a grammatical constituent of a sentence.
2.
A short musical passage.  Synonym: musical phrase.
3.
An expression whose meanings cannot be inferred from the meanings of the words that make it up.  Synonyms: idiom, idiomatic expression, phrasal idiom, set phrase.
4.
Dance movements that are linked in a single choreographic sequence.



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"Phrase" Quotes from Famous Books



... phrase, however, toward one experience—the advent of Miss Molly Mackinder, the heiress, and the challenge that reverberated through the West after her arrival. Philosophy deserted him then; he fell back on the primary ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... kind; the boys were obligated to good citizenship. But the coldness!—comfortlessness!—of it all. The open arms of the world!—how mocking in its abstractness. What did it mean? Did it mean that they—the men who uttered the phrase so easily—would be willing to give these boys aid, friendship when they came out into the world? What would they say, those boys whose ears were filled with high-sounding, non-committal phrases, if some man were to stand before them and say, "And so, fellows, ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... Webster's first appearance in court has been the subject of varying tradition. It is certain, however, that in the counties where he practised during his residence at Boscawen, he made an unusual and very profound impression. The effect then produced is described in homely phrase by one who knew him well. The reference is to a murder trial, in which Mr. Webster gained his ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... simple folk, which lives unwritten on the lips of lovers, and which should never be dissociated from singing.[29] There are, besides, peculiarities in the very structure of the popular rispetto. The constant repetition of the same phrase with slight variations, especially in the closing lines of the ripresa of the Tuscan rispetto, gives an antique force and flavour to these ditties, like that which we appreciate in our own ballads, but which may easily, in the translation, degenerate ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... their age in. Venerable's not a nice word to use about anything except a cathedral. You can call the Abbey a venerable edifice or the sacred fane, but it would look nicer if you call the old buffers "the Elder Statesmen." Good phrase that! Hasn't been used much, either. Get it done quickly, will you?" He turned to John. "You might have made us miss the Home Edition with your desire ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... of his sheep, oxen, oils, and wines, not money. Today, the devout offer a sacrifice of money to the Deity. We are all familiar with the requests of religious institutions for gifts, which nearly always finish with the phrase, "And the Lord will repay you many fold." In other words, sacrifice part of your worldly goods to the idol, and he will repay with high interest. He will give in return long life and much riches. The savage was afraid to utter the real name of his god, it was taboo. The modern says, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... not slacken until he drew rein at the giant doorway of a block of flats in the Rue Boissiere. It was then about five o'clock, and he meant to appear at his mother's tea table. He was far from looking the "limp rag" of his phrase to Joan. Indeed, it might have taxed the resources of any crack regiment in Paris that day to produce his equal in condition. Twenty-four years old, nearly six feet in height, lean and wiry, square wristed, broad shouldered, and straight as a ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... a strange power in words. This simple phrase recalled to Erik what a geographical feat he was in hopes of accomplishing, and without his being conscious of it restored him to good humor. It was true, after all, that the "Alaska" would be the first vessel to accomplish this voyage. Other navigators ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne

... about the weather, crops, the telegraph, railroads, thunder storms, electricity, and such other subjects as were suggested by the climate and state of the weather, Mr. Prying left the room, wondering where this priest got his knowledge, and how could he be one of that low, canting, Scripture-phrase class to which all ministers he ever knew belonged, and in which he thought the priest must have exceeded the ministers in degree as much as the Green Mountain exceeded the little knoll ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... Latin literature. Excepted divisions. Comic Latin literature. Examples of its verbal influence. The value of burlesque. Hymns. The Dies Irae. The rhythm of Bernard. Literary perfection of the Hymns. Scholastic Philosophy. Its influence on phrase and ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... were bawling and carts rattling on the cobbled thoroughfare; from the entrance the parrot vociferated after me as I went down the passage beneath an open window whence an invisible violin repeated the opening phrase of "Come, cheer up, my lads!" plaintively and persistently; while from the far end, somewhere between it and the harbour side, an irregular ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... was incapable of understanding such a phrase as the resources of science and art?-I think so, as it is applied here; because I may mention that in the correspondence which passed before, and which refers to the same parties, they said they did not know that whales ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... up both hands in a most theatrical manner, exclaimed, "Mon Dieu!" It was the only French phrase she knew, and she used it upon all occasions. This time, however, it was accompanied by a loud call for her vineagrette and for air, at the same time declaring it was of no use trying to restore her, for her heart was broken and she was ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... brow contracted in a puzzled frown, but she waited. The young doctor tried again to phrase the matter. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... not altogether quit of youth, when he is already old and honoured, and Lord Chancellor of England. We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the phrase goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open our communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march. There is our true base; that is not only the beginning, but the perennial spring of our faculties; and grandfather William can retire upon occasion into the ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was all of a piece—everything was growing worse and worse. "Young matron," indeed!—where had his grandchild picked up that precious phrase? She was growing all too worldly-wise for his simple old mind. His abashed eyes turned away from her and began to blink at the twinkling candles on the tea-table; it stood there like an altar raised for the celebration ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... the usual painful picture of the distress of the manufacturing classes, and citing for his authority some English journal. In doing this he has made a somewhat alarming mistake. The colloquial phrase job-work has perplexed, and very excusably, the worthy Belgian, and he has drawn from a very harmless expression a terrible significance. "Partout le travail est le metier de job (job-work) comme disent les Anglais—un metier a mourir sur le fumier." In another place ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... Buddha had the key. Sometimes when he was calling I wished Gabriel would appear in my doorway and announce the end of the world to see, if without omitting a syllable, Kishimoto would keep on to the end of the last phrase in the greeting prescribed for ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... winter my second volume appeared, and Monsieur Louis Ulbach set to work again; but this time he found me merely "ingenious." It was a good deal more than I merited, and I would willingly have contented myself with this phrase. Unfortunately, I could not forget the austere counsel of Monsieur Louis Veuillot, and at this very epoch, Monsieur Louis Ulbach, who as a novelist could merit a great deal of praise, took it into his head to publish a thick volume of transcendental criticism, in which he attacked ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... to say, can this phrase be read in its full harmony with the whole Epistle. "He hath somewhat to offer," in the sense that He has for ever the grand sacerdotal qualification of being an Offerer who, having executed that function, ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule

... Sacred Well was not for common use, it was for the cleansing of the soul, and the healing of the grievous wounds of the spirit. There must be yet another transformation: London had become Bagdad; it must at last be transmuted to Syon, or in the phrase of one of his old documents, the City ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... poetry, a poetry of detached waver and brilliance, a beautiful flowering of language alone—a parthenogenesis, as if language were fertilized by itself rather than by thought or feeling. Remove the magic of phrase and sound and there is nothing left: no thread of continuity, no thought, no story, no emotion. But the magic of phrase and sound is powerful, and it takes ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert

... One little phrase, some three-and-thirty lines back, perhaps the fair and suspicious reader has remarked: "Three days after his arrival, Harry was walking with," etc. etc. If he could walk—which it appeared he could do perfectly well—what business had he ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... me many years ago,—how flatteringly that little phrase seems to extend the scale of one's being!—when I had just entered on the active duties of manhood, that some affairs called me to New Orleans, and detained me there several months. Letters of friendship gave me admission into some of the most agreeable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... point. You condemn the business practices in which I have engaged all my life as utterly unchristian. If you are logical, you will admit that no man or woman who owns stock in a modern corporation is, according to your definition, Christian, and, to use your own phrase, can enter the Kingdom of God. I can tell you, as one who knows, that there is no corporation in this country which, in the struggle to maintain itself, is not forced to adopt the natural law of the survival of the fittest, which you condemn. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... voice: but, staff in hand, Ulysses rose; Minerva by his side, In likeness of a herald, bade the crowd Keep silence, that the Greeks, from first to last, Might hear his words, and ponder his advice. He thus with prudent phrase his speech began: "Great son of Atreus, on thy name, O King, Throughout the world will foul reproach be cast, If Greeks forget their promise, nor make good The vow they took to thee, when hitherward We sailed from Argos' grassy plains, to raze, ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... her sleeves rolled up, showing her pretty, fair arms, was soaping a child's shirt. She rubbed it and turned it, soaped and rubbed it again. Before she answered she took up her beater and began to use it, accenting each phrase or rather punctuating them ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... it's the whole meaning of the act," confessed Stingaree, still the dandy in tone and phrase. "But ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... speaks her praise For whom I shape my tinkling phrase Were summoned to the table, The vocal chorus that would meet Of mingling accents harsh or sweet, From every land and tribe, would ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... accompaniments for performers of her own compositions, including The Devout Lover, which, she told Miss White, she considered one of the best songs in the English language, at the same time asking for her autograph. Miss White was kind enough to write her signature with the MS. music of the first phrase—notes and words—of the song in a book which my wife kept for the autographs of distinguished ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... things"—Crashaw's own phrase—might serve for a brilliant and fantastic praise and protest in description of his own verses. In the last century, despite the opinion of a few, and despite the fact that Pope took possession ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell

... alarmed at this thousandth letter in a week. This is more to Lady Hamilton(272) than to you. Pray tell her I have seen Monsieur la Bataille d'.Agincourt.(273) He brought me her letter yesterday: and I kept him to sup, sleep in the modern phrase, and breakfast here this morning; and flatter myself he was, and she will be, content with the regard I paid to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... improved civilization, and not to a mere desire to ape those above them in society; for that could hardly suffice to persuade these Drury Lane audiences that they are amused by a tiresome piece tiresomely acted, and tedious musical strains, of which they cannot carry away a single phrase, which sets nobody's foot tapping or head bobbing with rhythmical sympathy, being all but ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... prose of King Alfred and the Chronicle. Ohthere's North Sea Voyage and Wulfstan's Baltic Voyage is the sort of thing which is sent in every day, one may say, to the Geographical or Ethnological Society, in the whole style and turn of phrase ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold

... around these old walls, to yield them now without a struggle. We say, unhesitatingly, to those in authority, there are brave men here, who are prepared to make of Charleston a second Saragossa. We use no fancy phrase. We mean the exact thing. We mean fight the country inch by inch to her outside lines; and we mean, then, fight it inch by inch to the foot of old St. Michael's walls.... We want no Atlanta, no Savannah business here.... ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer

... set bounds to fancy by experience; but the North American Indian clothes his ideas in a dress which is different from that of the African, and is oriental in itself. His language has the richness and sententious fullness of the Chinese. He will express a phrase in a word, and he will qualify the meaning of an entire sentence by a syllable; he will even convey different significations by the simplest inflections of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... can not go on until that important question is settled. There is argument on both sides. The client looks anxious. The jury sit and wonder what that phrase of "the delay of the law" may mean. Finally a bright idea ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells

... admirably suited to a noble theme. There is hardly a weak bar in it from beginning to end; and some of the work here done by the composer will compare favorably with any operatic music ever hoard. In this opera melodic phrase goes hand in hand with character and motive, and Mignon, Philina, Wilhelm Meister, and Lothario, are distinguished in the music ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... of the cougar is a common phrase. It is not very certain that the creature is addicted to the habit of screaming, although noises of this kind heard in the nocturnal forest have been attributed to him. Hunters, however, have certainly never heard him, and they believe that the scream talked ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... Mahon has pointed out this error, p. 401. I should add that in the last 4to. edition, corrected by Gibbon, it stands "want of youth and experience;"—but Gibbon can scarcely have intended such a phrase.—M.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... deep inspiration. And now they walked back and forth in silence broken only by a casual word or desultory phrase. Once Staniford had thought the conditions of these promenades perilously suggestive of love-making; another time he had blamed himself for not thinking of this; now he neither thought nor blamed himself for not thinking. The fact justified itself, as if it had ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... varieties of the holly and cedar, and so forth, and this is to be called and entitled Joanna's Bower. We are determined in the choice of our ornaments by necessity, for our ground fronts (in poetic phrase) the rising sun, or, in common language, looks to the east; and being also on the north side of the hill—(don't you shiver at the thought?)—why, to say truth, George Wynnos and I are both of opinion ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... beauties of the poems are lyrical beauties. In exuberance and richness of color it is Mr. Yeats's most typically Irish poem based on legend, and nowhere do his lines go with more lilt, or fall oftener into inevitability of phrase, or more fully diffuse a glamour of otherworldliness. "The Wanderings of Oisin" revealed poetry as unmistakably new to his day as was Poe's to the earliest Victorian days. Beside the title poem another from legend had this new quality, "The Madness of King Goll," with its refrain ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... and put it carefully back into the envelope. Why on earth was he re-reading it, when he knew every phrase in it by heart, when for a month past he had seen it, night after night, stand out in letters of flame against the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... moments notes Of happy, glad Thanksgiving; The hours and days a silent phrase Of music we are living. And so the theme should swell and grow As weeks and months pass o'er us, And rise sublime at this good time, ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... conversation would be carrying it to excess. Only the exaggerated exaltation of mind attendant on love-making can enable lovers to endure the transcendentalism with which they bore one another. And then the look which makes an arrow of the most trifling phrase, the caress which gives the merest glance a most eloquent meaning—how can prosaic pen and ink and paper report these fittingly? The sympathetic reader must guess what George and Mab said to one another. He must fancy how they said it, and he or she must see ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... labors of Sister Myrtha and her associates among the poor and sick of Zuerich—quiet women, of no particular prominence in the social world, and not learned or accomplished; "nur einfache Maedchen" (only simple maidens, quiet, ordinary women, as we might translate Sister Myrtha's own phrase), but living "not to be ministered unto, but to minister," commending their creed by their deeds, and winning sympathy by the loving, self-denying spirit that ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... England's arming; desires an explanation of the intentions of this court, as to the affairs of Holland, and proposes to disarm; on condition, however, that the King of France shall not retain any hostile views in any quarter, for what has been done in Holland. This last phrase was to secure Prussia, according to promise. The King of France acknowledges the notification by his minister at London, promises he will do nothing in consequence of it, declares he has no intention ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Austria-Hungary had been mobilizing troops and massing them along the frontiers of Serbia and Montenegro, any increase in the size of which countries meant a crushing blow to the designs of the Germanic powers and the end to all the dreams embodied in the phrase ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... remaining portions of the two counts may be summed up under the familiar cry: "No taxation without representation." What did that just accusation mean when our fathers uttered it in regard to English tyranny? Did they mean that their property was taxed, and they had no redress? The phrase originated with Patrick Henry, who read to the Virginia House of Burgesses the decision gleaned from a study of "Coke upon Lyttleton," that "Englishmen living in America had all the rights of Englishmen ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... he threw to the cabman, in the proper phrase (which he was proud to recall from his youth), as though the cabman had been something which he ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... expression, of Plato and Berkeley among the philosophers. He does not work with so fine and biting a point as his distinguished countryman and fellow-philosopher, Anatole France, but he has, nevertheless, a burin at command of remarkable quality. He is a master of the succinct and memorable phrase in which an idea is etched out for us in a few strokes. Already, in his lifetime, a number of terms stamped with the impress of Bergson's thought have passed into international currency. In this connexion, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... in your eyes. The phrase "babies [i.e., dolls] in the eyes" is probably only a translation of its metaphor, involved in the use of the Latin pupilla (a little girl), or "pupil," for the central spot of the eye. The metaphor doubtless arose from the small reflections of the inlooker, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... explanation, quite as much as the difference between the astrolatry of one age and the astronomy of another. We find no recognition of the propriety of recounting the various steps of that long process by which, to use Kant's pregnant phrase, the relations born of pathological necessity were metamorphosed into those of moral union. The grave and lofty feeling, for example, which inspired the last words of the Tableau—whence came it? Of what long-drawn chain of causes in the past was it the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley

... moderate in speech. Nevertheless, perhaps therefore, made it clear that PREMIER'S overtures, unloved by his followers, will not be welcomed by Opposition. CARSON, who had enthusiastic reception from Unionists, flashed forth epigram that put Ulster's view in a phrase. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various

... absolutely; for quantity is limitation considered with relation to some standard of measurement, and finitude is limitation considered simply in itself. The sphere of quantity, therefore, is absolutely identical with the sphere of the finite; and the phrase infinite quantity, if strictly construed, is a ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... Andrew! Say it!" he adjured. "There is no 'death' and there are no 'dead,' as this world understands the words. So one term is as good as another. 'Dead' or 'passed over.' It's all one. Neither phrase means anything. Don't be afraid of ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... mine are one!" said Colonel Kirby, using a native phrase that admits of no double meaning, and for a second Yasmini ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... But in the endeavour to find in Twentieth Century English a precise equivalent for a Greek word, phrase, or sentence there are two dangers to be guarded against. There are a Scylla and a Charybdis. On the one hand there is the English of Society, on the other hand that of the utterly uneducated, each of these patois having also its own special, though expressive, borderland which we name ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth

... that Ruth was unsympathetic concerning the creative joy. She used the phrase—it was on her lips he had first heard it. She had read about it, studied about it, in the university in the course of earning her Bachelorship of Arts; but she was not original, not creative, and all manifestations of culture on her part were but harpings ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... phrase—a phrase that the ignorant or impostors daily smite our ears with on the subject of the relations between man and woman, and between the poor and the rich—"it always has been so," and the conclusion drawn therefrom—"it will always be so," is in every sense ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... the name of Valerie Fortin, wife of Sieur Marneffe, for her sole and separate use. Valerie, inheriting perhaps from her mother the special acumen of the kept woman, read the character of her grotesque adorer at a glance. The phrase "I never had a lady for a mistress," spoken by Crevel to Lisbeth, and repeated by Lisbeth to her dear Valerie, had been handsomely discounted in the bargain by which she got her six thousand francs a year in five per cents. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... by Watts that there is scarcely a happy combination of words, or a phrase poetically elegant in the English language, which Pope has not inserted into his version of Homer. How he obtained possession of so many beauties of speech it were desirable to know. That he gleaned from authors, obscure as well as eminent, what ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... season of rutting (an uncouth phrase, by which the vulgar denote that gentle dalliance, which in the well-wooded[*] forest of Hampshire, passes between lovers of the ferine kind), if, while the lofty-crested stag meditates the amorous ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... literary structure too much; think what we should lose by dwelling on them too little! The magic of mere words; the mission of language; the worth of form as well as of matter; the power to make a common thought immortal in a phrase, so that your fancy can no more detach the one from the other than it can separate the soul and body of a child; it was the veiled half revelation of these things that made that old text-book forever fragrant to me. There ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various

... satisfied Martha. She considered that Katharine Maitland had the "perfectly sweetest manner of any girl in the world," and was daily trying to improve her own by the pattern set. "Make my regards." She had never heard that phrase before, but it impressed her as very stately and "Miss Eunicey," so put it away in her memory for future use. She was further delighted by Katharine's begging her and Mary to walk home with her, as far as they went her way, for she had something ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... The conventional phrase "a floating palace" will do well enough to describe the interior of this turbine yacht. No reasonable man could have asked more of luxury than was to be found in the well-designed bath rooms, in the padded library with its shelves ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... so engrosses the time and thoughts of ministers, that they have not leisure for matters of greater moment. It must also be remembered that it is only of late that the popular assemblies in this part of the world have acquired the right of determining who shall govern them—of insisting, as we phrase it, that the administration of affairs shall be conducted by persons enjoying their confidence. It is not wonderful that a privilege of this kind should be exercised at first with some degree of recklessness, and that, while no great principles of policy are at stake, methods ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... his subjects the reverend face of justice; his orgies made him popular; natives to this day recall with respect the firmness of his government; and even the whites, whom he long opposed and kept at arm's-length, give him the name (in the canonical South Sea phrase) of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... result of another combination of Toxins, akin to a belief in the former illusion. Roughly speaking, I think his general position was that as Toxins are a secretion of microbes (I am certain of that phrase, anyhow), so thought and spiritual experiences and so forth are a secretion of the brain. I know it sounded all very brilliant and unanswerable and analogous to other things. He hardly ever took the trouble to say all this; he was far too much interested in what he already knew, or ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... principal families. It was not published until 1845, but is well worthy of being preserved, not only for its antiquarian interest, as being the earliest account of Devonshire, its agriculture and its industries, but also for the pleasure of its quaint turns of phrase, the ponderous classic authorities which he marshals to support a simple fact—and there are indeed some strange wild-fowl among his authorities—and above all for a gentle and unobtrusive humour which seasons all the narrative. Westcote gives a list of the fish afforded by the Devon seas (a very ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... discussion of our plans. Briefly, however, we are buyers, buyers, we hope, of a particular area. Because of what we have in mind to do we would rather it was done quietly and without any publicity. Had we engaged the services of a large agency this would not be possible, for, if I may coin a phrase, the trumpet must blow strongly to announce the coming of genius." He smiled, stroked his chin, looked up at the ceiling and his lips moved silently as if he enjoyed repeating ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer

... is to walk slowly, either from infirmity or choice—"Come, let us toddle," is a very familiar phrase, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... their naturall comming as it were, and not raysed by Witch-craft. But generally I must for-warne you of one thing before I enter in this purpose: that is, that although in my discourseing of them, I deuyde them in diuers kindes, yee must notwithstanding there of note my Phrase of speaking in that: For doubtleslie they are in effect, but all one kinde of spirites, who for abusing the more of mankinde, takes on these sundrie shapes, and vses diuerse formes of out-ward actiones, as if some were of nature better then other. Nowe I returne to my purpose: ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I

... that it ought to be administered only by immersion: such, they insist, is the meaning of the Greek word baptizo, to wash or dip, so that a command to baptize is a command to immerse. They also defend their practice from the phrase buried with him in baptism, from the first administrators' repairing to rivers, and the practice of the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... had compared a man to "a king in an ermine robe," she had expressed her utmost pitch of admiration. She had heard this expression long ago in a camp-meeting discourse, and it seemed to her almost too grand a phrase for human use, unless one were ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge

... celebrated in 1885 the nineteenth centenary of the death of Virgil, the classic poet to whom Tennyson owed most, they asked him to write an ode, and nobly he rose to the occasion, attaining a felicity of phrase which is hardly excelled in the choicest lines of Virgil himself. But it is as the laureate of his own country that he is of primary interest, and it is time to inquire how he fulfilled the functions of his office, and how he rendered ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... asked himself suddenly and wildly what was wrong with him. A better opening for his crushing announcement could not have been desired. Yet he stood dumb as a man of stone. One blurted phrase would commit him irrevocably, but his lips would not say it. And ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... Chanito wrongly," said l'Encuerado, repeating a common phrase of mine; "the huitzitzilins do not migrate; they go ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... The curtain goes up ... the actor whose benefit night it is comes on. His uncertainty, the way that he forgets his part, and the wreath that is presented to him make the play unrecognizable to me from the first sentences. Kiselevsky, of whom I had great hopes, did not deliver a single phrase correctly—literally not a single one. He said things of his own composition. In spite of this and of the stage manager's blunders, the first act was a great success. There ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... The phrase "constructively disloyal" rankled in his soul. He argued about it upon every possible occasion, and felt that if the accusation could be disproved the De Willoughby case would be triumphantly concluded, which was in ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... these days, of classes. There's a phrase it sickens me tae hear—class consciousness. It's ane way of setting the man who works wi' his hands against him who works wi' his brain. It's no the way a man works that ought to count—it's that he works at all. Both sorts of work are needful; ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... make that condition. Seriously speaking, come to me glittering with orders and I shall probably succumb. I can't resist stars and garters. Only you must, as you say, have them all. I don't like to hear Mr. Dormer talk the slang of the studio—like that phrase just now: it is a fall to a lower state. However, when one's low one must crawl, and I'm crawling down to the Strand. Dashwood, see if mamma's ready. If she isn't I decline to wait; you must ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... it may seem, Samuel had never before heard the phrase, "the survival of the fittest." And so now he was living over the experience of the thinking world of fifty or sixty years ago. What a marvelous generalization it was! What a range of life it covered! And how obvious ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... comfort Miss Barringer in the least. She was greatly grieved when she thought she had broken a young man's heart: she was still more dismal at the slightest intimation that she had not. If any explanation of this paradox is required, I would observe, quoting a phrase much in vogue among the witty writers of the present age, that Miss Susie Barringer was "a very ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... a change of some sort in Administration is determined upon, and that the Chancellor has the task of composing those jarring atoms to prevent the King's Cabinet from being stormed. That Lord Shellbourne will be taken in, de quelque maniere ou d'autre. Storming a Cabinet is a phrase coined in my time, to express what I cannot pretend to say that I do not understand, but how the fact is practicable, invito rege, will be for ever a mystery to me, and if it happens with his consent ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... complete, and it was remarkable that there did not appear to be any proper distinction of caste between the Russian-Siberian natives and those who had been exiled for crime. There appeared even to be little interest in ascertaining the crime—or, as the customary phrase appears to be here, the "misfortune"—which caused the exile. On making inquiry on this point I commonly got the answer, susceptible of many interpretations, "for bad behaviour." We found a peculiar sort of criminal colony at Selivaninskoj, a very large ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... only indignant one. All the Indians were in a fury with the government agents. They felt that they had been tricked, caught by a phrase they did not understand. They believed that undue influence had been brought to bear upon their chiefs. Had the delegates been allowed to return to Florida to give their report, some Indians would have heard it with favor, but all were angered because the chiefs had been influenced to make ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney

... not be before the fall of the leaf. I have too many things to do this summer to have any time for it." He had not forgotten that bold and amusing speech, and every day he became more pressing, every day he pushed his approaches nearer—to use a military phrase—and gained a step in the heart of the fair, audacious woman, who seemed only to be resisting ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... have been, while momentarily relieved at knowing that he had no legal obligation to carry out his father's wishes so far as Sadie Burch was concerned, his conscience was by no means easy and he had not liked at all the tone in which the paunchy little lawyer had used the phrase "you're ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... Rome? It may have been so. I know that men used to suspect Dr. Newman,—I have been inclined to do so myself,—of writing a whole Sermon, not for the sake of the text or of the matter, but for the sake of one single passing hint—one phrase, one epithet, one little barbed arrow, which, as he swept magnificently past on the stream of his calm eloquence, seemingly unconscious of all presences, save those unseen, he delivered unheeded, as with his finger-tip, to the very heart of an initiated ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... stopped short and demanded an explanation of some obscure phrase, the answers to which were now correct, now hazy, now brilliantly original. On the whole it was not satisfactory; and when for a change the Doctor gave up reciting, and made the boys read, the effect was still worse. One boy, quite a master of ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... of sitting was the stage of the measure alluded to in phrase quoted from LEADER OF OPPOSITION. But, as was testified anew last Thursday, business in House of Commons does not always run through expected courses. In strained temper of the hour anything might happen, even a bout of fisticuffs. What actually did happen was that within space of hour and a-half ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various

... me, dear friend," he commenced, "to intend the offence you imagine. You have misunderstood an insignificant phrase, which I let escape carelessly, and ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... lofty strains, Dwell, while their fire the lightest heart enchains. Through these and all our Bards to whom belong The pow'rs transcendent of immortal song, How difficult to steer t'avoid the cant Of polish'd phrase, and nerve-alarming rant; Each period with true elegance to round, And give the Poet's meaning in the sound. But, wherefore should the Muse employ her verse, The peril of our labors to rehearse? Oft has your kind, your ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... the split in our party over the Boer War, when we were in opposition and the phrase "methods of barbarism" became famous, my personal friends were in a state of the greatest agitation. Lord Spencer, who rode with me nearly every morning, deplored the attitude which my husband had taken up. He said it would be fatal to his future, dissociating himself from the ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... your minds uncertain, Between the scene and you this curtain! So writers hide their plots, no doubt, To please the more when all comes out! Of old the Prologue told the story, And laid the whole affair before ye; Came forth in simple phrase to say: "'Fore the beginning of the play I, hapless Polydore, was found By fishermen, or others, drowned! Or—I, a gentleman, did wed The lady I would never bed, Great Agamemnon's royal daughter, Who's coming hither to draw water." Thus gave at once the bards of Greece The cream and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... [43] This phrase, the usual epithet of the general of the Jesuit order, would indicate that Lopez was addressing that official—who was then Claudio Aquaviva; he ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various

... his simple, unaffected manner, sometimes with Madame Reynier and Mr. Chamberlain also for audience, sometimes to her alone. And since they lived keenly and loved, all books spoke to them of their life or their love. A line, a phrase, a thought, would ring out of the record, and each would be glad that the other had heard that thought; sometime they would talk it all over. They learned to laugh at their own whimsical prejudices, and then insisted on them all the harder; they learned, each from the other, some bit of robust ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... a peculiar honor in my mind, from the exemplary devotion of her whole life to her father, for whom her dutiful and tender affection always seemed to me to fulfil the almost religious idea conveyed by the old-fashioned, half-heathen phrase ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... the attempt at burglary so happily defeated, Paul thought he ought to go round to the counting-room of Mr. Preston and acquaint him with the particulars. He accordingly deferred opening his place of business—if I may use so ambitious a phrase of the humble necktie stand over which he presided—and bent his steps toward Mr. Preston's counting-room. The ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger

... to Mr. KING'S latest performance. Some hold his complaint, that the Government had introduced detectives into the precincts of the House, to have been perfectly genuine, and point to his phrase, "I speak from conviction," as a proof that he was trying to revenge himself for personal inconvenience suffered at the hands of the minions of the law. Others contend that he knew all the time the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various

... uncle said, and in that single phrase all the outer husk of the rough and ready seaman—the character he had assumed in playing his part for so many weeks—sloughed away. He was the simple, tender-hearted, almost childish Cap'n Abe that she had met ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... comforts of travel, and assured the safer and more rapid delivery of goods. This period is sometimes known in American history as "The Era of Good Feeling" and the turnpike contributed in no small degree to make the phrase applicable not only to the domain of politics but to all the relations ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... have on the petticoat is a phrase of very unusual occurrence, of which the sense may, without much difficulty or risk of error, be collected from ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley

... sunflower," says Mr. Robert. "And he concluded by announcing that nothing would suit him better than to be told the name of the most difficult subject in the metropolitan district—'the hardest nut' was his phrase, I believe. He guaranteed to land the said person within a week. In fact, he was willing to bet ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... speeches by as many men, on a variety of barrels, each orator being affectionately tugged to the pedestal and set on end by his special constituency. Every speech was good, without exception; with the queerest oddities of phrase and pronunciation, there was an invariable enthusiasm, a pungency of statement, and an understanding of the points at issue, which made them all rather thrilling. Those long-winded slaves in "Among the Pines" seemed rather fictitious and literary in comparison. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various



Words linked to "Phrase" :   line, catch phrase, show, lexicalise, turn of phrase, formularize, head word, expression, pronominal phrase, catchphrase, formularise, terpsichore, express, evince, locution, dance, air, phrasal, ruralism, predicate, pronominal, nominal, dogmatize, tune, arrange, in the lurch, strain, ask, response, out of whack, frame, ligature, saying, like clockwork, set up, grammatical construction, ostinato, put, passage, modifier, saltation, dogmatise, prepositional phrase, musical passage, melodic phrase, idiomatic expression, lexicalize, construction, phrasal idiom, dancing, melody, phrasing, set phrase, rusticism, qualifier, melodic line, headword, order, redact, couch, cast



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